


Until You Come Back Home

by mumuinc



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Riko Moriyama is his own warning, Suicide, The Perfect Court (All For The Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumuinc/pseuds/mumuinc
Summary: Riko, Kevin and Jean take a road trip to Baltimore to recruit a new backliner for the Perfect Court. Jean has a few realizations on the drive over.





	1. Night

The drive had been Riko’s idea. 

 

Jean wasn’t entirely sure yet what Riko was angling for, since he and Kevin never brought Jean along for these recruitment trips but at sunset after afternoon practice, Riko had told him to pack an overnight bag with enough clothes to last them the weekend in case whoever they were going to see turned out to be a hard sell and adding that there were places he and Kevin wanted to stop by. Jean had kept his head down and followed orders lest he ruin Riko’s streak of good mood, but privately he wondered.

 

Kevin offered no explanation when Jean met the pair in the athletes’ parking lot above Castle Evermore. Riko’s Lexus was gunned up and idling when he surfaced from the underground catacombs that was the Nest, and Riko was already installed in the vehicle’s backseat.

 

The night was pitch black and this early in the fall, the last dregs of summer thunderstorms were still cycling through the West Virginia landscape. Jean wondered, as he hurried to find refuge from the rain under Kevin’s umbrella, why they had to leave tonight instead of waiting out the storm in the morning. The roads were going to be unbearably slick and driving on the Interstate would be a bitch and a half at the late hour. It was going to be a complete riot in the rain.

 

Kevin had already stowed his and Riko’s bags in the boot and he shot Jean a dirty look when Jean made for the back of the car. One dark-tinted window slid down and Riko’s eternally youthful, pale face popped out like a disembodied head. He was smiling and none of the warmth in the gesture reached his dark, slanted eyes.

 

“You’re late,” he announced, and there was something that was not quite malice that dripped from his voice. He didn’t sound angry though, but Jean could not help the slow trickle of dread that dripped down his spine. Maybe it was just rainwater soaking the back of his thick sweatshirt as he and Kevin stepped somberly towards the car.

 

Riko tapped the rainguard of his window before tossing something out to Jean. The slap of metal on his palm caught him by surprise and he nearly dropped the car keys as he fumbled to catch it. His wrist hurt from the catch and he wondered again why he was being brought out tonight when Riko had never so much as allowed him to step out of the Nest in weeks. The day’s long practice had done a number on his arms and he had been looking forward to Kevin and Riko’s absence in order to get some much-needed rest.

 

It looked like he was not getting any for the night, for several nights, it seemed, if the mount of clothes Riko had him pack was going to be any indication.

 

“Just for that, you’re taking the first shift of our drive.” Riko’s posture was casual, easy, inside the car as he started to shut his window to keep the rain out, but Jean stiffened. He’d never been allowed to drive, even after getting his license, after the last attempt he’d made when he was fourteen, to try to escape the Nest by stealing one of the coaches’ cars. He’d barely survived his punishment that night and every car ride he went on was still hopelessly associated with the horror of that memory.

 

Kevin stopped walking in front of the driver’s seat, his expression sour, as if he wasn’t much interested in having Jean join the trip. “Get in.”

 

Jean hesitated. The keys in his hand bit into the skin of his palm as he gripped the ridges of the cold metal. He and kevin were getting thoroughly soaked despite the umbrella, and in truth, his limbs felt too leaden to be able to drive for an extended period into the night.

 

“There’s no driver?” he whispered in French, aware Kevin was waiting for him to get inside. He knew on extended road trips for this kind of recruitment, the team had a driver to bring either the Master or Riko and Kevin to their destination, and he briefly wondered if the absence of one meant Riko was planning something. He always was anyway, whether there would be witnesses or not.

 

“The Master is is needed in New York,” Kevin said by way of a reply, again, an oddity. The Master’s business in New York was usually settled with clipped phone calls to Lord Moriyama. “Quit stalling and get a move on.”

 

Jean snapped his mouth shut on the heels of another question. If Kevin was getting impatient, there was no telling what Riko’s mood would be like if Jean kept him waiting. He didn’t want to spend the next five hours locked in a metal box with Riko in a murderous mood. He might bring the knives out and stab Jean in the back while he was driving, and while he was pretty sure he would survive the knifing, the three of them probably wouldn’t survive it if Jean accidentally-on purpose drove the car into a ditch at sixty per hour.

 

Riko had an easy, nonchalant expression on his face as Jean adjusted the seat and mirrors to accommodate his long frame, and briefly, he wondered again at the other man’s good mood. Riko in a good mood these days was a lunar eclipse that manifested once in a quarter if he was lucky. Kevin folded himself into the seat beside Jean, face carefully blank, as he shook the rain out of his dark hair and dumped the umbrella on the floor of the passenger seat. Jean thought he maybe finally got it. The two of them just needed a chauffeur for the night.

 

He caught Riko’s eye in the rearview mirror as he moved the car to reverse out of the lot. The rain poured in torrents and he had to move slowly, lest he backed into a passing vehicle. His fingers felt a bit stiff from the cold and both his wrists still ached--the harsh clacking of Exy sticks in full-body checks from the day’s practice still giving him a twinge of pain that he felt all the way up to his elbows.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

Riko tossed him the file he’d been looking at while he waited for him and Kevin to get into the car. Jean had to brake to catch the folder and set its contents on top of his overnight bag on the passenger seat. In the dim light of passing vehicles, he could make out a headshot photo of a boy and numbers and figures he assumed were Exy stats of whoever it was they were recruiting.

 

“Baltimore. The Master got a call for a promising new backliner for our court.” Riko sounded smug. 

 

Jean wanted to hazard a glance back at Kevin, but the dark road that lay ahead of them demanded his attention as he maneuvered the car carefully towards the highway exit. A quick glance in the rearview mirror told him Kevin was, surprisingly, not paying attention, and had his eyes trained on the rain-drenched passing scenery outside.

 

“Take the exit to I-64,” Riko instructed and Jean angled the car for a turn to comply. “Kevin wants to pass by DC in the morning before we get there.”

 

Jean’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “We can make it there by midnight if the traffic holds up.” It was only nine thirty and far too early for getting into DC by dawn.

 

“We can stay overnight in Lexington,” Riko replied easily. Kevin continued to stare moodily into the darkness outside. “This weather is a bitch for a road trip in the middle of the night and I’m not letting you drive us into a ditch or off a cliff when you get too sleepy.”

 

Jean eyed Riko suspiciously. “I thought we were switching every few hours.”

 

Riko waved the question off with a nonchalant hand. “Kevin hurt his hand in practice, and I’m not feeling up for a drive in the middle of nowhere.”

 

Jean didn’t mention that he thought he’d hurt his hands too; practice had been long and brutal but it wasn’t in his nature to complain if Riko was going to give him an out after a few hours’ drive. The dull ache in his wrists was something he could put up with if it meant he got to catch a few hours’ sleep in an actual bed as opposed to having the driver’s seat reclined into Kevin’s lap. He’d operated on the court under a lot more pain than just a stupid muscle pull in his arms anyway.

 

They turned into the highway and Riko filled the silence in the car with conversation about Exy, talking easily about the day’s practice (which had gone well, if his good mood was any indication), about plays he expected Jean and Kevin to put into effect in their next game, about the season they were going to have, how the freshmen were shaping up, and about the prospective recruit they were going to see play. Kevin gave curt, one-worded answers, his eyes trained into the passing scenery of cityscape dissolving into miles and miles of forest, so Jean was obligated to talk to Riko for him lest they somehow offended their captain and ruin what was shaping up to be a good and quiet night.

 

The rain had slowed into a heavy drizzle, not quite enough for Jean to pick up speed on the slick roads of the Interstate, but enough that visibility wasn’t a chore. The vehicles on the road dropped off in number the later in the night it got and that made the drive a little easier as they passed state lines into Virginia.

 

“What’s the name of the Master’s prospect?” Jean asked when Riko ran out of plays he wanted to discuss. He caught Kevin’s eye in the mirror and the other man’s face looked sharp and gaunt in the semi-darkness, his pale skin luminous where the light hit his face, green eyes hooded. Jean shrugged. “It’s too dark for me to read the file.”

 

“Wesninski,” Riko answered, reaching forward to grab the folder from the passenger seat. “The Master knows his father.”

 

Jean carefully didn’t comment about this fact. The name didn’t ring any bells but if it was anyone the Master knew personally, he knew it would be bad news. He caught Kevin’s eye again when he glanced at the mirror. Kevin had an extremely sullen expression on his face and was pulling gloves on as he shivered in his damp coat. Jean reached forward to turn the temperature up, but Riko swatted at his hands with the folder, even as he continued talking.

 

“Kid has some good stats. If he plays well enough, we might soon get a number four. Kevin and I talked about making him your partner.”

 

Jean stole another look at Kevin’s face, which looked paler than death. Kevin shook his head minutely, a warning for Jean to keep his mouth shut. Riko was still waiting for a reply to his statements, so Jean said, “Are we going to scrimmage?”

 

He actually hoped not, for both his and Kevin’s sakes. Kevin looked like he was just on the onset of hypothermia, his face unbearably pale, lips already starting to turn blue. Jean’s wrists still ached, but he put his mind in speeding up to get to Lexington and the promise of a warm hotel room, if only so that Kevin would stop looking like he was going to die.

 

“Of course,” Riko said imperturbably, completely oblivious to the silent conversation going on between the other two men through the rearview mirror. “We have to test him before the Master can offer a contract.”

 

Jean’s brows furrowed. “Didn’t his coach send any tapes?”

 

Riko laughed, the sound somewhere between amused and cruel. “You know you can’t trust tapes for the Perfect Court, Jean. This kid has been playing with a bunch of useless nobodies all his life. You can’t gauge talent when there’s no adversity.”

 

Jean wondered if adversity meant getting hit with a racquet again and again and still managing to play through broken ribs, fingers and concussions, but wisely decided not to comment. He opened his mouth for another question but Kevin interrupted him with an abortive gesture of his gloved hand.

 

“Can we take a pit stop? My legs are killing me.”

 

The ticking red digits on the dashboard told Jean it was just half-past midnight. The rain had picked up again when they got into Virginia, hampering his drive as he had to be mindful of skids on the slick asphalt. They were still sixty miles from Lexington and the landscape outside was just endless miles of forest. He glanced back at Riko, who was consulting his phone.

 

“Turn off to the right in three miles. There’s a stopover just before Longdale Furnace. There.”

 

Jean maneuvered the car into the slip road. The stopover was a 24-hour gas station with a convenience store and a Waffle House that Riko wrinkled his nose at as the car rolled to a stop in front of the pumps, which was the only area that was covered besides the Waffle House and the store. The three men got out of the car. Kevin huddled in his coat, stretching his long jeans-clad legs as he kept his eyes trained on Riko, who was just now working the pump, his movements easy, casual. Jean realized he’d never seen Riko do ordinary people things like filling up the gas in his car and the realization left him feeling a bit off kilter. He’d always seen Riko as this ruthless Exy machine that barked orders and doled out punishments to his team that it never occurred to Jean that when faced with life outside the Nest, Riko had to know how to function like a regular human being too.

 

Riko fished his card from his wallet and handed it to Jean. “Go pay for the gas.”

 

Jean nodded and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head, ready to make a sprint for the cashier inside the convenience store across a row of uncovered parking slots, when Kevin tapped a hand on his shoulder before turning to Riko.

 

“I gotta take a leak. Toilet’s inside.”

 

Riko stared at the two men for a moment. Just beside Jean, Kevin was standing close enough that Jean could hear the chatter of his teeth, could feel him trembling in his coat. He reached into the car for the umbrella and brought it over their heads, waiting for Riko to give them permission. Riko mimed an action Jean supposed he meant that he was matching the two of them and let them go. They huddled under the umbrella as they sloshed into the rain before entering the the relative dry safety of the convenience store.

 

Kevin made a beeline for the toilets while Jean walked up to the counter to pay for the gas. His eyes snagged on a packet of cigarettes and some cheap gas station coffee, and he fished into his pocket for a few bills. Riko would not take kindly to the cigarettes so he hid these in the pocket of his sweatshirt, and then picked up a few tabs of painkillers. The ache in his wrists was starting to get distracting and he popped two tablets of the painkillers and washed it down with the coffee. The hot liquid burned a path of fire to his stomach just as Kevin stepped out of the restrooms looking like a wilted flower, his pale face practically colorless.

 

Jean handed him one of the cups of coffee as he waited for the gas receipt. “Are you alright?”

 

Kevin actually sniffled a bit. “Yes. Just cold.”

 

The coffee did little to bring warmth back into Kevin’s face. Jean reached up to try to pinch some color into the sharp, gaunt cheeks when he realized his own hands were freezing and he would probably just make Kevin feel worse. Kevin’s eyes flickered over his face from behind the rim of the coffee cup and Jean wanted to ask whether he needed any cold medication, but the cashier was handing him back Riko’s card and the receipt, and the two of them trudged back to the car.

 

Riko was already inside, leafing through a different file when they got in. He snubbed the gas station coffee Jean offered him, so Kevin took it over gratefully, letting the steam from the piping hot liquid warm his face as Jean got them back on the highway.

 

The three of them were silent as Jean drove. Riko shoved his phone into the USB jack and filled the car with noise from the Japanese death metal bands he listened to. Jean sipped his coffee silently while he drove. The dull throbbing of his sprained wrists had subsided into an ignorable ache, but now, his head threatened to split into a migraine at the garbled screaming and heavy guitar riffs of Riko’s music.

 

It was another forty-five minutes before they pulled into Lexington, and ten more before they found a hotel suitable for their needs. Kevin immediately commandeered the shower in an effort to get warm as Jean laid out the comforter on the third single bed that housekeeping had brought in for them. Riko changed out into sleeping clothes quickly and sternly reminded Jean that they had to leave by five if they had any hope of stopping by DC and getting into Baltimore by ten. Jean nodded but the coffee had jolted his system back into alertness and he couldn’t sleep, so he let himself out to the balcony and drew the curtains so he could smoke.

 

The rain had started to come down heavier than before, washing the townscape into a sort of runny watercolor tableau of darkness and light. He watched as the smoke snaked nonsensically from the cherry of his cigarette to fade into pale nothingness as the spray of rainwater dampened his cheeks and dry clothes.

 

“That’s going to be the death of you.”

 

He started at the words whispered in French and would have tossed his cigarette if he hadn’t remembered that it was just Kevin and that kevin was safe. Jean huddled to a corner of the balcony to give space for Kevin to be able to step out. He was still unbelievably pale but the dull sheen in his bright green eyes had lifted and color had finally returned to his mouth.

 

Jean stared at it for a moment, bringing his cigarette to his own lips as Kevin watched him back with an unreadable expression on his face. “What are we doing here, Kevin?”

 

Kevin eyed him for a long moment before stepping over the threshold of the balcony and into Jean’s space. He waved his hand to disperse the cloud of smoke that Jean exhaled. “You shouldn’t be here, Jean. You shouldn’t have come.”

 

Jean wrenched his eyes from Kevin’s hooded gaze to stare out into the sheets of rain pouring into the Virginia night. “You know, it’s been almost six months since I last saw the night sky. I can’t remember if it was during the finals last season.”

 

“There are no stars out tonight,” Kevin said quietly.

 

Jean huffed something like a laugh, putting the cancer stick to his lips again and taking a long drag. “The stars are never out when I’m up here.” 

 

He didn’t mean to say that stars didn’t exist in the joke of a tragedy that was Jean Moreau’s life, but Kevin heard it anyway. He moved his hand up to maybe touch Jean’s face, but his fingers stopped about an inch short, twitching. Jean tossed the cigarette and caught kevin’s fingers in his own hand. How Kevin managed to be even colder than Jean even after spending so long in a hot shower was something Jean would never understand.

 

“Does your hand still hurt?” he whispered, cradling Kevin’s icy fingers in his equally cold palm.

 

“Not anymore.” Kevin’s thumb ghosted over the peaks of Jean’s knuckles and it felt like ice pouring down his spine. Jean couldn’t stop staring at the tracery of blue veins, like cracks on the paper-white planes of Kevin’s skin.

 

Jean pulled his hand away, averting his eyes from Kevin’s gaze and the unfathomable silence that hung in his large eyes, threatening to swallow Jean into its bottomless depths. “You should get inside. You’re freezing.”

 

Kevin’s eyes flickered with something unnameable before he bit his lip, nodding. The hand that Jean had jeld was clenched into a fist that Kevin shoved into the pocket of his hoodie. “Five o’clock, Moreau.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so gone for Kevin/Jean (OK, I confess, I am gone for Kevin/anyone)
> 
> And if you're sitting there and telling me Riko Moriyama doesn't listen to Dir en Grey, buddy you are so wrong.
> 
> Title comes from I Don't Wanna Live Forever by ZAYN and Taylor Swift.


	2. Daybreak

Waking Kevin up turned out to be a bigger chore than Jean originally thought it would be. Riko’s alarm went off at four thirty and he was showered and dressed in the half hour it took for Jean to finally lose patience and drag Kevin out of bed by the ankles and let him fall to the hotel room’s carpeted floor with a thud. Kevin’s sour expression as he peeled his face off the floor before he got carpet burn was venomous.

 

“Fuck you,” he mumbled as Jean shoved a towel and a change of clothes to his chest while Riko picked up their bags.

 

“Five o’clock was your idea, asshole,” Jean retorted, folding the clothes he’d worn to bed the previous night and shoving it deep into his overnight bag. He’d woken before Riko’s alarm, restless sleep plagued by dreams about racquets and knives and being handcuffed to his bed. He’d showered quickly to wash the smell of fear from his body and ordered room service coffee for the three of them.

 

Kevin’s coffee was cold by the time he finished his shower but he gulped it down anyway, eyeing Riko over the rim of his cup warily as Jean called the front desk for check out. Sunrise had not yet broken by the time they loaded their things into the back of the car. Riko took the driver’s seat this time and Kevin stretched out face down into the backseat, asleep before Riko even gunned the engine. Jean folded his long body into the passenger seat and tried not to feel out of sorts with Riko’s silent consideration.

 

The storm had blown itself out the previous night so the morning was damp, dreary and gray. Riko didn’t talk so Jean kept quiet and let Riko thumb through the radio until he found a station playing his kind of music. This early in the morning, Jean tried not to grit his teeth with the cacophony and privately wondered how Kevin could sleep through the noise of Riko’s music. He was playing it loud enough for the bass lines to burst through Jean’s eardrums.

 

When they arrived into DC, the morning traffic added to the clamor of sounds bursting into Jean’s ears. His head hurt and the pain in his wrists were back in full force.

 

Riko wove the car expertly through the traffic with generous use of the car horn and probably breaking a few laws on the way before finally pulling into the parking space of an old stone church. Jean looked up in something like wonder. Old buildings in the middle of a busy city district took his breath away. Riko killed the engine and nodded to Kevin.

 

“Wake that piece of shit up.”

 

Jean leaned over, prepared to yank kevin to the floor. Kevin woke a little easier this time, his face creased with the stitching of the car’s leather upholstery, eyelashes fluttering stupidly before he shot Jean a distinctly unpleasant look as Jean grabbed his arm. He was probably aware that he was going to be thrown to the floor again if he didn’t wake. They got out of the car, Kevin stretching his cramped legs from the awkward angle in which he’d fallen asleep as Riko retrieved something from his bag.

 

The church was deserted this early in the morning. Jean trailed after Riko and Kevin as they made their way through the pews to a small side altar, probably meant for devotional prayer. Kevin lit a candle while Riko wandered around, training the camera he was holding--probably Kevin’s--on the ornate arches in the ceiling, whistling occasionally when he found some part of the architecture or maybe the stained glass work impressive.

 

Jean shuffled forward as Kevin stood in front of the altar and the candle box. There were about ten other candles lit and in varying stages of melting off. The warm collective light seemed to reflect the flicker of thought in Kevin’s somber eyes.

 

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Jean said softly. Being in the church made him feel awkward, especially as he could hear Riko behind them and he sounded so typically like a tourist. So unlike himself.

 

“I’m not,” Kevin replied, staring down as the candles burned themselves out. “Mom was, though. She used to bring me to Sunday service when she wasn’t too busy.”

 

“In Ireland?” Jean asked quietly. Kevin nodded and the shadows on his face shifted and contrasted starkly with the way the soft yellow glow of candlelight lit his face as he moved. 

 

“Do you believe in God, Jean?”

 

Jean stared at Kevin’s face, mesmerized by the play of light and darkness the candlelight created, like a chiaroscuro tableau. Kevin appeared hypnotized by the flicker of flame, the occasional sputter of wax on a lit wick, the slow extinguishing of yellow fire on the sticks that had melted down. He fidgeted with the long sleeves of his sweater, fingers circling his wrists, wanting to flex the ache of the sprain away, but not wanting to call Kevin’s attention to the injury. Kevin would probably bitch and whine at him if he found out. And if Riko found out…

 

“If there’s a god, Kevin, he’s not listening to us,” Jean murmured, turning away. “Let’s go, before Riko decides to set this place on fire.”

 

They found Riko training Kevin’s SLR on the bowl of holy water set on a marble pedestal at the entrance. Kevin took his camera from Riko and the three of them made a mad dash for the car in the parking lot. It had started to rain again.

 

They made one more stop at a deli for breakfast sandwiches and more coffee, and then Riko handed Jean the keys and Jean got them back on the highway. Riko and Kevin sat at the back again, talking in hushed voices about their plans for Baltimore, so Jean switched off the radio and listened to the patter of rain on the windshield as he drove. The pastrami sandwich he’d eaten sat uneasily in his stomach. He still had a migraine and his wrists were really starting to hurt like a bitch, especially as he maneuvered the wheel to take the Baltimore exit. He was starting to feel a little light-headed and when he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirrir, he realzed he was almost as pale as Kevin had been the night before. He hoped whatever Kevin had wasn’t catching.

 

Riko dictated instructions to Jean that brought them to an area of suburbia that was nothing but rows upon rows of large, expensive looking mansions with fancy sloping driveways and antique wrought iron gates. It figured that whoever it was the Master knew here must be rich. Jean privately thought about what kind of criminal enterprise the Wesninskis were into for them to live in this kind of ostentatious grandeur.

 

He looked out for the kind of sprawling gated private school these kinds of neighborhoods usually had, but Riko’s directions brought them instead to one of the large fancy mansions with the sloping driveways and flagstone tiles. The gate for vehicle entry was closed but there was a small side gate meant probably for pedestrians that was open.

 

Jean killed the engine and glanced back to Riko and Kevin. Riko was sporting a smile Jean didn’t think bode anything well, and Kevin was pale-faced again, brows knitted with worry.

 

“Does this kid not go to school?” Jean asked before Kevin could shake his head in warning.

 

“No, his father kept him home today just to meet us,” Riko replied, tugging his coat around his neck before stepping out into the rain to retrieve his racquet that he’d packed away in the boot.

 

Jean tugged his hood over his head and hazarded a glance again at Kevin before stepping out. Kevin looked like he was dying, his face was so pale, lips drawn to a tight colorless line, his eyes wide and afraid. Of what, Jean wasn’t sure, but if Kevin was this disturbed by their presence in this place, Jean was wary and resolved to have his wits about him.

 

Kevin caught his wrist just as he turned to go. “You should go back. Riko and I can manage this.”

 

Jean felt a twinge of pain as Kevin gripped his arm. The throbbing hadn’t stopped and his head was swimming but if anything, Kevin actually looked worse, the misery in his expression palpable as rain pelted his hair, his eyelashes, his face, rivulets of water running down his jaw to his neck, dripping off the sharp cliff of his chin.

 

“Kevin, you’re the one who was miserable last night. Maybe  _ you _ should wait in the car.”

 

Kevin’s eyes widened at whatever he’d seen on Jean’s face and shook his head. “I--no, I have to do this with you if you’re going in.”

 

The two of them made a run for the gate hand in hand, and sprinted up the driveway. Kevin only stumbled on the flagstones once, and Jean caught him, hauling him up, his wrists screaming as he did. His head throbbed in time with the steady pelt of rain on his face.

 

Riko was already at the top of the driveway, in front of giant oak double doors that were already ajar. “Look, Kevi. Seems Nathan got it all ready just for us.”

 

Kevin grimaced and said nothing as he clung to the sleeve of Jean’s sweatshirt. Riko pushed one of the doors open wth the butt of his racquet. There were no lights on inside the house and the entire place was shrouded in gloom. Riko’s booted feet clicked on marble tile as the three of them stepped inside. Jean wanted to find their host or at least where the light switch was so they could see better inside the dark mansion, but Kevin’s fingers clung to his sleeves with surprising tenacity, preventing him from doing much except to half-drag Kevin after Riko as he waltzed nonchalantly into the house like he owned it.

 

“Maybe we should wait for Mr. Wesninski,” Jean called after Riko cautiously, as RIko found the stairs that presumably led to the basement. Kevin was gripping his wrists so tightly now it felt like he was going to break them.

 

“Hush,” Riko said coolly, leaning his racquet against the wall and reaching into his coat pocket for something, what it was Jean couldn’t tell with the darkness covering the mansion like a suffocating blanket. “We’re expected here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

 

Riko groped in the dark for a moment before he found the knob to the door of the basement and pushed it open. A strange smell, not entirely unfamiliar, assaulted Jean’s face as the cold musty air rushed out from the open door. He knew that scent. It was a smell that bathed him on nights when Riko thought his performance on the court was not up to par.

 

Blood.

 

Beside him, Kevin gagged at the stench. Jean kept Kevin at his back and made to lunge after Riko, fearful of the unknown blackness in the basement, when something, no some _ one _ , small and compact and with a shock of red hair, darted past them.

 

“What the--”

 

Riko shrieked. “No! Get that kid!”

 

Jean barely had the presence of mind to flatten himself and Kevin against the wall before Riko came barrelling up the stairs, face transfixed into a manic grin, eyes gleaming with bloodlust, as he chased after the figure that had disappeared into the bowels of the mansion. More than that, Jean thought he caught a glint of something metal as Riko ran past them, elbowing Jean painfully in the gut as he passed.

 

“He has a knife!” Jean wheezed as Kevin attempted to peel the both of them off the wall. “We have to stop him, Kevin! That kid was just a child. Riko might--!”

 

He stopped talking mid-sentence because Kevin had slid to the floor, staring at his left hand incredulously. He must have stumbled when the boy in the basement darted out and Riko had probably stepped on his hand in his haste to run after his prey. Even in the dim light of the hallway, Jean could see Kevin’s fingers were bent in an unnatural way. His palm was bloody.

 

“Fuck, you’re bleeding,” he gasped as Kevin stared at his hand, horror etched into his handsome face. Somewhere in the darkness, Jean could hear Riko calling for the boy. He needed to find Riko first, then he could deal with Kevin. The other man looked like he was in shock.

 

“Kevin, listen. I need you to stay here. I have to find Riko before he manages to kill that kid.”

 

Kevin stared up at him with wide, horror-filled eyes. “He’s in the bathroom.”

 

“What?”

 

“Nathaniel.” Kevin’s voice was raspy with pain. “He’s in the bathroom. Riko’s there too.”

 

Jean eyed him incredulously. “How do you--”

 

The sound of a door being thrown open interrupted him. It was quickly followed by the sound of Riko’s nasal voice crooning out the boy’s name.

 

“Nathaniel, I know you’re in there.”

 

“Shit,” Jean hissed and let Kevin go as he sprinted up the stairs leading away from the basement. The bathroom was right next to the stairs and Riko was at the doorway, brandishing his knife.

 

Jean was unbearably well-acquainted with that knife. It occupied a prized spot in most of his darkest nightmares of Riko taking him apart for the slightest of reasons, sometimes for no reason at all. The artificial light streaming out of the bathroom glinted dangerously on the knife’s sharp edge. In front of Riko, Jean could see a little boy no older than eight or nine years old, with panic-stricken icy blue eyes and messy auburn hair flopping over a face riddled with far too many scars for someone so young. The boy looked up at Jean and something like recognition clicked in his cold blue eyes. Jean thought he looked unbearably familiar, but he couldn’t place the child’s face, because at that moment, Riko chose to swoop in.

 

Jean lunged after Riko, terror at what his deranged captain might do to the child seizing his throat. Riko thrashed wildly against his arms, twisting and attacking him with the knife. He heard him snarl unintelligibly and then a hot pain jolted up his arms. He let Riko go in surprise. He’d managed to slash up Jean’s wrists. Blood pulsed and spurted out of the wounds, drowning out Nathaniel’s frantic, high-pitched cries for help.

 

Jean couldn’t hear him, he could barely hear himself call out Kevin’s name at the sound of his blood rushing to his ears. He stumbled forward, dizzy, and caught himself on the tiled floor at the threshold of the bathroom. The blood pouring from his cuts slicked his hands, nearly making him fall face first on the tiles. Dimly, he registered Kevin kneeling over him, turning him, so he could sit, propped against the door. The sounds of Riko relishing his kill as he took the boy apart made him feel sick.

 

“Kevin, what have I done?” he gasped, reaching out blindly for his friend. The hand that Kevin caught him with was the one covered in blood, too mangled and misshapen to just be coming from Riko accidentally stepping on it in his haste. It looked sick. It looked deliberate.

 

Just like the cuts on Jean’s wrists.

 

“I told you you shouldn’t have come,” Kevin said quietly with a sigh as he cradled Jean’s sweat-flushed face with his bloody hand. “I told you to turn back.”

 

Jean stared up at Kevin’s pale, drawn face, not comprehending. Kevin pointed gravely into the bathroom and Jean turned mechanically to follow his gaze.

 

The bathroom floor was bathed in blood but Riko and the little red-haired boy was nowhere in sight. Instead, a pale young man crouched, fully clothed, under the warm spray of the shower. He had scars riding up the entirety of his arms, white ridged bracelets of skin ringing his wrists. There were twin slashes on his arms where blood poured out and mingled with the shower water, sloshing around the red and gold of his soaked sweatpants, before spiraling down the drain. When the man turned to Jean and Kevin, Jean couldn’t suppress the shudder of recognition at the tattooed number 3 on the man’s cheek.

 

Finally, he understood.

 

There was no road trip, no eerie, unlit mansion in the middle of suburban nowhere, no pale-skinned Kevin looking like he was two seconds from cardiac arrest, or a smiling Riko going full-on American Psycho on an eight-year-old Nathaniel Wesninski. That child didn’t even exist anymore; he was an eighteen-year-old man now and his was Neil Josten. He’d been the one to bargain for his, Kevin’s and Jean’s lives from the Moriyama lord.

 

And finally, here was Jean, sitting in the bathroom of his USC dorm, throwing it all away.

 

He turned to the ghostly image or hallucination of Kevin his fevered mind had conjured and he looked down at Jean almost tenderly, so completely at odds with the real Kevin, the anxiety-riddled, awkward bundle of nerves who didn’t know how to talk to Jean after he’d left him in the Nest alone to deal with the Master’s ruthlessness and Riko’s crazed obsession.

 

“He’s already dead, Jean. Why do you keep letting him rule over you?”

 

Jean grimaced. His vision was dimming at the edges. He’d probably lose enough blood soon for his senses to start shutting down. “It’s not about him, Kevin. This choice, it’s mine. I’ve taken on it on the first day choice was taken away from me.”

 

“Mm,” Kevin said. “I thought you were just being sentimental and decided to kill yourself on the day I ran out of the Nest… or the day Neil Josten arrived. It’s a funny coincidence, don’t you think?”

 

“Fuck you,” Jean rasped out, but there was no heat in his words.

 

“Yeah, maybe next time, when you’re not too busy dying.” Kevin laughed grimly. He regarded the other Jean, the one dying on his dorm bathroom floor, with thoughtful eyes. “Would you have made a different choice if I hadn’t ran?”

 

“Is this a rhetorical question?” Jean snapped, suddenly annoyed. “You think too highly of yourself.”

 

“Maybe,” Kevin said, straightening. He looked down at Jean with something like contrition flashing in his green eyes, more kind than Jean had ever seen them before. “Sorry, Jean. I guess I’m taking away one more choice from you today.”

 

Jean opened his mouth, itching to give Kevin a piece of his mind, but he was so tired, so very tired now, fighting to stay awake, to keep his belabored lungs rattling for breath just so he could have the last word in this ridiculous, imagined conversation.

 

“There’ll be other choices to make, Jean. Plenty of other things to get mad at me, or Riko, or the world in general, about. But now, you really ought to just choose one thing: your life. Then maybe, you can choose not be an asshole about it to me someday. Maybe you can even choose Exy. We’ve still got that eighty percent we owe to the lord to pay off.”

 

Kevin’s voice was soft and it sounded lulling. Before his brain could completely shut down, he managed one final breath:

 

“Fuck you, Day. Get out of my death throes and go badger someone else about Exy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Actual summary of this story:
> 
> Jean tries to kill himself on the anniversary of the day he was sold to the Moriyamas and has a long-ass hallucination about going on a road trip, having ambiguous, sexually charged moments with Kevin, and Riko channeling Patrick Bateman.
> 
> There's one more chapter, because Kevin, predictably, doesn't want to let Jean die in peace.


	3. Morning

Jeremy was already half a mind to drive back to the dorms by the time Kevin called him at 3AM. It had taken all he could to convince himself that Jean was going to be fine on his own--he’d said so himself--and he didn’t need Jeremy’s charity for the Christmas break, thank you very much. The dorms weren’t closing since there were plenty of exchange students not flying back to their home countries for the holidays and Jean refused to be badgered by any of the Trojans to come spend the holidays with their families

 

Jeremy hadn’t been convinced in the slightest of Jean’s claims that he would get on just fine alone and had been prepared to hunker down in the dorms to stay with his troubled teammate until Jean had shouted at him that he was hampering his progress and that he just wanted to be left alone to deal with his shit on his own and not have Jeremy or Laila or Alvarez breathing down his neck and insisting he be part of whatever social event normal people engaged in during Christmas holidays. Jeremy wasn’t going to be swayed but Jean needed the space after four months of living in close quarters with the cheerful, happy-go-lucky lot of the Trojans that Jeremy had been inclined to believe that maybe this really _was_ for the best. Sure, Jean had barely been able to function whenever he was left alone for longer than a few hours that Jeremy wondered how exactly he was planning to get on being alone in the dorm room they shared for two entire weeks. But he’d been the one to decide that he wasn’t going to encourage all of Jean’s unhealthy Raven-learned habits and if Jean really needed the space to recover, then by God, Jeremy Knox was going to give it to him. Besides, it wasn’t like Santa Rosa was all that far away; he could always drive back at some point between Christmas and New Year to check up on the troubled ex-Raven.

 

He’d just passed the exit to Los Banos, tired and sleepy from the four hour drive on his way to Santa Rosa where his family lived when his phone pinged thrice in rapid succession. He hadn’t bothered to fumble with the gadget, figuring he could check out the texts on his next stopover when the Bluetooth speaker ringer cut into the stream of pop music he’d been listening to in order to keep awake, and Kevin Day’s voice crackled on the speaker. He sounded like he was either crying or very very drunk.

 

“I can’t get Jean, Jeremy. Is he with you?”

 

Jeremy glanced at the dashboard clock and wondered internally what plan of existence Kevin grew up in that a missed call at 3AM was going to cause such an uproar. “Kevin, it’s the middle of the night. He’s probably already asleep; he was reading when I left the dorms.”

 

“‘When you left the dorms…’ where are you going? Did you leave Jean alone?” Kevin sounded frantic and Jeremy could almost imagine him pacing a hole out of wherever he was at.

 

“It’s the first day of winter break. Most of the team’s gone home, Kevin. _I’m_ going home. And Jean didn’t want to come with any of us. He practically threw me out of my own room.”

 

More crackling and the faint sound of Kevin cursing drunkenly as the sound of the phone shifting hands filled the dead air before an audible click that told him he’d been switched to speaker phone. Jeremy frowned as he slowed to turn off the slip road towards a gas station stop. It was closed but the Waffle House attached to it was open twenty four hours. He swung the car into an empty lot and switched back to handset as he killed the engine. Might as well grab a coffee while he was there. Santa Rosa was still a good two hours away.

 

When a voice finally came back on the receiver, it was no longer Kevin. “Jeremy, this is Neil Josten. Kevin says you have to go back for Jean.”

 

“What? Why? Is something going on with him that he told you about?” He couldn’t keep the anxiety from creeping into his voice. Or the twinge of jealousy, as it were. He’d spent the better part of six months practically glued to Jean’s side, hopelessly trying to help the man rebuild all of his broken pieces together since he’d joined the Trojans, and Jeremy had barely scratched the surface of Jean’s trauma. Neil Josten had only ever stayed with Jean for three weeks and he spoke of him as if he knew his life story.

 

“Today’s the anniversary,” Neil said, and his own voice seemed to catch on something Jeremy couldn’t name.

 

“Of what?”

 

“Of everything,” Kevin choked out before dissolving into unintelligible swearing.

 

“We’re en route to the airport,” Neil said. “We’ll be there in four hours.”

 

Shit.

 

Jeremy forgot about getting coffee, the tinny sound of the Waffle House speakers playing some sleepy Frank Sinatra Christmas song grating on his raw nerves, and dashed back to his car, unable to stop the rising creep of dread licking into his collar as he gunned back towards LA. He didn’t know what Kevin meant about the anniversary but if the sound of drunken cursing and Neil Josten’s sepulchral voice were anything to go by, it couldn’t mean anything good.

 

He spent the next two hours courting fate with the speed limit and frantically trying to get ahold of any of the twenty eight other Trojans who may still have been at the dorms, but over half of them had left earlier than he had, and the rest probably had their phones off or in flight mode as the team had excitedly gone home for the holidays following an early release from practice

 

Trojan Hall was dead silent in the gray hours of dawn by the time Jeremy had reached campus. The corridors were unlit to save energy when most of the dorm occupants were out for the semester break. By the time Jeremy reached their floor, he was an anxious, sweaty wreck. He’d sent a text to Coach Rhemann, knowing the man wouldn’t see his message until at least 7. His legs were screaming from the mad sprint he’d taken through the stairs to their sixth floor dorm when the elevators took longer than two seconds to open, and he burst into the room shouting Jean’s name.

 

The lights were on as was the TV, playing through a DVD of some black and white French film or maybe it was some war era TV show that Jean had been watching five hours ago before he left. There was no reply. Over the white noise of dialogue coming from the TV, he heard the faint sound of water rushing, and for a split second, Jeremy was filled with rage that he’d driven back for two hours over nothing, that Jean was probably just taking an early morning shower, and he’d been asleep before that, reason why he missed any of the twenty six missed calls Jeremy had attempted once he got off the phone with Kevin… a rage that died a quick sudden death when he noticed steam rising from the gap of the bathroom floor.

 

The door was locked and Jeremy only took three seconds to convince himself that Jean was probably _not_ taking an early morning shower--even one that took over twenty minutes would not have generated that much steam--before he was fumbling with his keys to open the door. The air was so hot and thick inside that his eyes watered, and when the steam dissipated enough for him to wade in and pull up the shower curtain, he just wished the bloody nightmare would end.

 

He nearly dropped his phone as he dialled 911 with fingers numb from fear as he prayed for time to slow, and he choked on tears as the operator took in his details and gave him instructions. There was still the faintest trace of a pulse in Jean’s pale neck, but he was unconscious, his shredded wrists bared to the world and still pulsing blood. His lips had turned blue and the deathly pallor in his lax face was something Jeremy hoped to never see again in his most fevered nightmares.

 

“Shitshitshitshit! Come on, Jean! Hang in there!”

 

He wasn’t sure whether it was minutes or hours or days between the arrival of the ambulance and the time it took to get Jean to the hospital. There’d been so much blood in the bathroom that the entire dorm reeked of the metallic tang of it, but the first responder had assured him that yes, Jean was alive, and when the ER doctor sought him out to let him know that his teammate was out of danger, it was all Jeremy could do not to collapse with the sheer relief that he’d succeeded, he’d made it in time, and Jean was going to be okay, or as close to okay as he could possibly be, all things considered.

 

Jeremy felt adrenaline sour and fizzle in his stomach as the last few hours finally sank into his bones. The nurses had moved Jean to a recovery room after his wrists had been stitched and bandaged. Jeremy had been pretty sure Jean had no family in America, otherwise he wouldn’t have been sitting in his dorm bathroom, slitting his wrists three days before Christmas. He’d been allowed into the ward, and as he now looked down at Jean’s peacefully sleeping face, he felt a spark of absurd relief at the faintest traces of color that was starting to creep back into the other man’s pale, drawn lips.

 

He sank tiredly into the chair next to the IV unit that hooked various tubes into the other man’s body and leaned forward, resting his head against the edge of the bed next to Jean’s shoulder. It was probably 7 now. He’d texted Kevin which hospital they’d gone to, and Coach as well, but with LA slowly waking into buzzing activity and Christmas cheer, it would take them the better part of an hour to wade through morning traffic. That was all right, though.

 

Hesitantly, he reached forward to touch Jean’s hand. “Sorry, man,” he whispered into the beeping of the room’s machines that monitored Jean’s life signs. “I can’t have you dying on me.”

 

The wave of exhaustion that swept through him was matched only by the blossoming of true relief in his chest as his fingers closed over Jean’s lift hand, unmoving but warm against the odd tremor of residual adrenaline in his fingers. He’d close his eyes for just a little bit, maybe, just to catch his breath and bask in the selfish certainty that no, he wasn’t going to lose Jean Moreau, at least not today.

 

Outside the ward, the rest of the world continued to turn.

* * *

 

When Neil, Kevin and Andrew arrived at the private ward at LAC-USC Medical Center, it was to the sight of a disheveled looking Jeremy Knox, dressed in three layers of mismatched sweaters and jackets, asleep in a chair, one hand still touching a waking Jean Moreau’s crooked fingers. Neil would wonder, hours later when they were in the car ride back to the airport, whether the choked sob escaping Kevin’s pale lips was one of unimaginable relief or poignant heartbreak as Jean’s eyes fluttered open, confused and disoriented, as he took in the sight of the three grim-faced Foxes crowing at the door, and the sight of his exhausted captain, leaning bare inches from his face, eyes closed and dead to the world.

 

He decided in the moment that it didn’t really matter as the cold slate gray of Jean’s eyes deepened into something like storm clouds over a tempestuous sea as he stared at a sleeping Jeremy. He offered a commiserating hand on Kevin’s shaking shoulders as he and Andrew stepped out of the room to let old friends mend or burn their bridges as they saw fit. It didn’t really matter what they did, because to him, it still meant they, all three of them, bloodied and broken and irreparably damaged by the ghost of Riko Moriyama, still won in the end.

 

_I don't wanna live forever_  
_'Cause I know I'll be livin' in vain_  
_And I don't wanna fit wherever_  
_I just wanna keep callin' your name_ _  
_ Until you come back home

\- I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (ZAYN and Taylor Swift)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this ending almost did not make it into existence because I didn't know how to properly write a happy one, or at least a hopeful one. I am ever so thankful that Jeremy Knox exists and that Jean Moreau had found his way to him. Also, Jeremy's weird narration is the result of me spending the past week obsessing over 80s fantasy novels. One of my very first ships came out of that fandom and I yearn to rediscover it.


End file.
